SB 11.23.14 – Obsession with artha doesn’t allow us to use it for dharma or even for kama

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
thank you shreemad bhagavatam 11.23.14 the avanti brahmana is speaking so he’s lamenting so his misfortune what a great misfortune means a waste bhaktivinoda thakur’s song often contain the word i have wasted my life so i have toiled and brought distress upon myself all in vain generally people say no pain no gain but here he is explaining how what he has got is all pain and no gain that is the ultimate fate of unbalanced materialism which is irreligious so i worked so hard and normally the purusharthas of life are dharma, artha, kama and moksha so artha is one of them artha can be used either to get kama to fulfill our desires and enjoy or artha can be recycled for dharma so that in the future we will also get artha and we can get kama and that is how the cycle is so he is saying that the artha which i had i did not use it for kama or i did not use it for dharma also normally when people have wealth they either want to enjoy now or they want to do some donation do some rupayas and religious activity so that they can enjoy in the future that means they are putting their artha for dharma so that they can take care of the future and join it but when people are excessively excessively materialistic here this person was so miserly that he was simply concerned with accumulating wealth and he did not think of even using it for his own good what to speak of the good of others what to speak of enjoying in this life now so none of these he did and aayasa so aayasa is actually the hard work the labor which he did i got nothing out of it and that is the nature of the illusion of this world that when people become too greedy there are many wealthy people who become super wealthy by exploiting others and you know they cause others to suffer because of the way they exploit them but then at the same time they themselves suffer because their greed does not allow them any peace of mind and their greed causes them to be in constant anxiety so basically unidimensional materialism where one does not give any time for god any connection with dharma that leads to misery not just in a future life but even in this life the people who are rabidly materialistic rabidly means in a diseased way like a rabid dog is just barking and biting without thinking of anything so we can become rabidly materialistic like that if we stay in the association of materialistic people too much and too unguardedly and rabid materialism leads to misery not just in the next life but even in this life so many people in the name of material enjoyment take drugs smoke and drink and they bring they bring suffering upon themselves and not just to speak in terms of karmic consequences of future life they’re suffering now also and actually unfortunately this sort of culture is being propagated today as happiness the tv serials show people having illicit affairs and doing all sorts of degraded activities and people think oh this is adventure this is enjoyment but that is not even material enjoyment now that is there’s so much anxiety so much fear of loss of prestige and so little pleasure at the end of it all so today most of today’s society is like this people have crying hearts but they plaster on smiling faces which are masks and if we get caught up then we will lose on real spiritual happiness and not get even material happiness so this rabid materialism if you want to avoid getting infected by that we need the vaccine of Krishna consciousness then no matter how rabidly materialistic people are around us those will not influence us those will not make us materialistic because we will know that there is a higher aware happiness waiting for me not just in the future but even now if I absorb myself in Krishna and then we can stay free from this infection of rabid materialism